Airline Emojis: banal idea or tool of the chatbot era?

Aviation is a highly technical field, but sometimes innovation can be found in the smallest - and perhaps banal - things, like emojis, the little stickers that people send each other through messaging apps to communicate concepts (well, the ancient Egyptians were first at this, though!)

The Portuguese airline TAP has gone as far as to release a whole Emoji keyword, called TAP FlyMoji, with over 100 emojis specific to the airline. The TAP emoji keyboard has images of its aircraft, crew and other items and concepts related to TAP.

While it may look like a fun, but ultimately futile, marketing exercise, some may point to the growing role of messaging apps and chatbots as a distribution channels for airlines. In this context, a broader range of "branded" emoticons could facilitate or speed up communication with the airline.

At least this is the take of British Airways, that also released its own set of emojis, although, just as a temporary experiment during the last Christmas period.